Agenda items were cast in the shadows Tuesday night as advocates for the homeless took over the public comment portion of the Dana Point City Council meeting to express displeasure with the council’s approach to homelessness.

For the third time in the past four council meetings, members of iHope, a San Clemente-based organization that works with the homeless and working poor, demanded the council address what they call a lack of resources available to Dana Point’s homeless people, including the need for a cold-weather shelter.

Six people who spoke expressed frustration at unanswered calls and emails the organization has left with City Council members. Steve Stewart of Dana Point said he emailed and called Mayor Steven Weinberg and Councilman Scott Schoeffel twice, but neither responded.

Stewart, an iHope member, accused the city of creating obstacles to resources for the homeless, particularly with a 10-person limit for church-operated shelters. The city adopted the limit in 2010. A shelter at Capo Beach Church shut down soon after.

Weinberg said he does not remember receiving any calls and of the hundreds of emails he receives, those from iHope didn’t stand out. He said homelessness is a complicated issue that no city has figured out.

“I don’t think anyone has found the magic bullet,” he said.

City Manager Doug Chotkevys said that Brandi Fox, a homeless woman who died in an alley in Capistrano Beach in February and whose death has been used by iHope as fuel in its push for an emergency shelter in Dana Point, died of alcohol poisoning, not homelessness.

“It’s truly tragic that Ms. Fox lost her battle with her demons and passed away, but I think her issues were much bigger than her being homeless,” Chotkevys said.

He said public safety is more important and cited assaults at Capo Beach Church when it operated an emergency shelter. Chotkevys said a man recently arrested in a theft case was identified as an iHope client.

“So one of the things we would like to do is ask iHope to be very careful as they screen their clients,” he said.

Former Dana Point resident Steve Hagy said crime and alcoholism happen everywhere, and that homelessness is not a crime. If an emergency shelter had been in operation, he said, Fox would not have been drunk in an alley but would have been in the shelter, where alcohol would not be allowed.

Hagy cited Dennis Rice as an example of someone who just needed a little help. Rice, a former Capo Beach Church shelter occupant, was homeless for about a year. Rice now lives and works in Santa Ana.

Contact the writer: “I reached the point where there was no lower place to go, but it was the people who showed that they cared enough about total strangers to bring them in, encourage them, and it made all the difference to me,” Rice told the council. “Without that, I probably wouldn’t be here today.”